Words
by Bertle
Summary: This is a series of Harry Potter drabbles. Each one will be inspired by a random word from a word generator and/or word requests. All requests will be written and a new update will be added every Friday until September. The drabbles will all be cannon and may be any rating, genre, world, and characters. See the Author's Note within for more details. Enjoy!
1. Diagnosis

***Hey everyone! Last year I began University and since then I haven't had much time to write or continue my other, longer story. Now that it's summer, I decided to begin adding quick HP drabbles to keep me writing so that I don't get too rusty while I wait for things to calm down. I am going to try to post a new one every Friday. They are inspired by a random word generator, and my rule is that I must use the first word I get! I will also accept word requests (requests are my favorite!) so if you have any favorite words, or words you've always been dying to see an author try to write about, feel free to review/PM me the word! I will write ALL requests, though, since it is only one per week, I will write on a first come, first serve basis. I will get to them all eventually though! Also, I am posting this story on harrypotterfanfiction as well, so if someone on there requests a word first, that may be why yours isn't the next one written. Alright, sorry about the long note- I just wanted to explain this story before it gets started!***

**AN: **Word: Diagnosis** This story is about the moment in the fifth movie after Harry snaps at Ron about Seamus and then has a nightmare about Voldemort/the Department of Mysteries door. In that scene, he wakes up and sees Ron staring at him. They never mentioned it again, and I always wondered what Ron was thinking there. So I wrote it! Enjoy!  
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I wake to the sound of a muffled cry. It's not very loud, but I'm only dozing. I sit up in my four-poster bed and watch my best mate in the bed next to mine. He's having another one of his nightmares. I don't think he knows I know about them, which just goes to show how much he's shut down lately, how oblivious he has become to the world. I may not be the most sensitive bloke out there, but I'm not blind either. He's falling apart, and even I can see that. Sure, the world has turned its back on him recently, but is that really a reason to shut out those of us who are trying to help him? Those of us who do believe him? I don't know how to ask the questions.

So instead I watch him.

Some would say he's lost his marbles. Diagnosis: mental.

I wish that he could see how angry I am that he's taking this out on me. Me, one of the few people who have stood by him through everything. One of the few people who see him: Harry Potter, and not The Boy Who Lived. How he can be mad at me, when I've only ever been supportive? I don't know how to make him stop.

So instead I watch him.

Some would say he's trying to manipulate the wizarding world. Diagnosis: dangerous.

I wish that he could see how frustrated I am that he won't let me and Hermione in, that he won't let us help him. We're trying so hard to understand, to be kind, to be supportive through all his venom, but the more we try, the more he pushes us away. I don't know how to make him explain.

So instead I watch him.

Some would say he just wants attention. Diagnosis: narcissistic.

I wish he could see how worried I am. I see him thrashing in his sleep every night. I see him stare into space for ages. I see the pain and horror in his eyes every time he thinks of that night. I see his hurt that so many of his friends have betrayed him. I see the deep pit of fury that no one believes him. He sees all the scorn in those around him. Why can't he see those of us who care? I know that he's falling deeper and deeper, and I'm so worried he won't be able to escape. I don't know how to lift him out.

So instead I watch him.

Lots of people have said lots of different things about him. But what do I, Ron Weasley, the one who has been there through it all, think? I watch him twist in his covers, hear him gasp, and see the tear run down his face, and, ridiculously, I can only think of what Hermione said earlier that day. Diagnosis: desperate.

Desperate for believers, desperate for trust, desperate for friends, desperate for family, desperate for love, desperate for life. Most of all, desperate to be heard.

But I don't know how to listen.

So instead I watch him.

As I watch, his eyes flash open. His breathing is heavy and loud in the silence. His sweat shines on his face in the moonlight. And as my eyes meet his, I see something I never expected to see. Relief. Finally he understands that I am here for him, that I will stay by his side through this coming war. The panic recedes and his eyes flutter closed again. His breathing slows and for the first time in weeks, his sleep becomes peaceful.

I know that tomorrow the desperation will be back, but I am glad that tonight he will rest. And I am also relieved that I have finally seen the sign that Hermione and I have been searching for so frantically: the sign that he can get better.

Diagnosis: Who bloody hell knows? I'm Ron, not Hermione. The complexity of Harry's emotions right now is too much for me to riddle out. But whatever it is, at least I know now that it's curable.

And maybe someday soon I will be able to stop watching and get a good night's sleep.

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**Thanks for reading! Please review if you had any thoughts or if you have a word for me to write about!**


	2. Covering

**AN: **Word: Covering** This one is set post-series and was oddly difficult to get right.**

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Harry still remembered the first day it happened.

It was his first Friday at work as an auror, which he only remembered because Fridays were the days when the staff had to report their work of the past week to their supervisor. Taking into consideration the fact that he had previously defeated the most powerful dark wizard of all time, the supervisors had outrageously high expectations of him. Then there was the other fact to note: that he had only been an auror for one week, and he and Ron had so far managed to accomplish arresting one wizard who was selling cupcakes that bit your tongue when placed in your mouth, and even then they had only discovered the wizard when Ron took a break and attempted to buy one of his cupcakes. Unfortunately, these two facts didn't go well together when trying to set up an impressive report.

So there he and Ron were, sitting back to back at their desks in their tiny cubby office, attempting to find a way to phrase, 'Arrested a man selling dangerous cupcakes,' that made it sound important.

"How about, 'We arrested a wizard selling lethal baked goods and auror Weasley sustained near-fatal wounds in the process.'?" Ron offered.

Harry considered it. "That might be stretching the truth a little too much. Besides, the 'baked goods' part makes it sound lame again anyways."

Ron opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by Harry's cell phone, a gadget that had been taken apart and put back together by Mr. Weasley on four separate occasions.

"Hold that thought. Hello?"

"Harry!" A feminine voice on the other line shouted, so loudly Harry held the phone away from his ear.

"Hey, Hermione," across the room he saw Ron straighten in his seat, "what's up?"

"I just got off the phone with Ginny, and she told me the most _adorable_ story about you…"

Harry waited patiently as Hermione rattled on about what a great boyfriend he was, requiring little to no input from him, until he glanced at the clock and realized he and Ron had half an hour to finish their report. He nearly jumped out of his seat, said, "Sorry, Hermione, it has been great talking to you, but I've got to go, I'll call you later okay?" and hung up before she could protest.

"What was that about?" Ron asked.

"Nothing, really. She just wanted to talk about when I surprised Ginny and took her out for dinner. Alright, so we've only got half an hour left, let's buckle down, okay?"

"WHAT?" Ron leaped to his feet.

Harry nodded. "I know, I know, but we can get it done if we really focus-"

"Not that!" Ron interrupted. "I meant you took Ginny out for dinner and let Hermione find out? Are you trying to ruin my life?"

Harry stared. He really couldn't think of anything else that was appropriate to do.

"Do you realize what this means?" Ron continued, really working himself up now. "Now that Hermione knows you've been all romantic and crap, all I'm going to get for the next month is, 'Ronald, why can't you be more romantic? Harry takes Ginny out!' God damn it! She'll never let it go!"

Harry opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

"Never mind. I'll just go home now and take her out tonight. That should put off the nagging for a while."

"But what about the report?" Harry asked, finally finding his voice.

"Oh right. Cover for me, will you?"

"No wait!" But Ron was already gone. Harry stared at the empty office. Then he glanced at the clock. Then he shouted at no one in particular, "Are you kidding me?"

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The second time it happened, Harry's thoughts were far less focused on work. He and Ron were sitting in their new, larger office that had their own filing cabinet. He and Ron were attempting to complete the gigantic task of researching potential locations for death eaters to hide in the Himalayas, but really, though Harry's eyes were on the page of the book he was reading, his thoughts were back at home. He had just asked Ginny to marry him, and she said yes. He was happier than he could ever remember being, but he was also extremely apprehensive. He had to find a way to tell Ron, and he had no idea how to do it. The conflicting emotions were causing turmoil within him, and there was no room left inside to focus on the Himalayas. He was very aware of the ticking of the clock, the crinkle of Ron's page turning, and his own shallow breathing. He bit his lip nervously. Now or never. Hesitantly, he opened his mouth- and was extremely grateful when his cellphone rang, and not only because it meant that it was still working after being rebuilt seven times.

He answered the phone with an overly excited, "Hello!" which, thankfully, the person on the other end didn't even notice under the weight of her own excitement.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted. He shifted the phone back an inch. "Congratulations! Ginny's just told me! I am so excited for you two! I've already started the planning and I think a spring wedding would be best, I mean, if we're having it at the Burrow then all the flowers would be in bloom…"

Harry settled deeper into his chair and allowed Hermione to drone on about wedding plans he was sure Ginny would change when she had her back turned anyways. It was nice to just sit in silence with his thoughts, without needing to feel guilty about not talking to Ron, since he had a perfectly legitimate excuse. All too soon, however, Hermione said, "Oh no! I forgot to ask Ginny how she feels about daisies- I've got to go, Harry!"

Sitting up suddenly, Harry said, "Wait, Hermione!" But she was already gone.

Ron glanced over at him. "That was Hermione? What did she want?"

Harry took a deep breath. Ron was going to find out tonight from Hermione anyways. "Ginny and I got engaged last night. She was calling to congratulate me."

Ron's mouth dropped. "What the hell, Harry?"

"I'm sorry, I was going to tell you sooner, but I was trying to find the right words and-"

"Like that would have made any difference. You realize I have to propose too, now, don't you?"

"I- wait what?" Harry blinked at him as he stood up and started quickly gathering his things.

"She won't say anything outright, but that's how they break you. It'll just be little hints here and there, comments on how lucky Ginny is, remarks about when it'll be her turn. God! She'll drive me nuts!"

"Where are you going?" Harry asked, rather confused.

"To buy a ring, obviously! Thanks a bloody lot, Harry!" He grabbed his wand off the desk. "Cover for me, will you?" And then he was gone.

Harry stared after him. Then he looked down at his book and grinned. Well, he'd have to do all the research by himself, but at least now he'd be able to focus!

* * *

The third time it happened, Harry was already on his cellphone as he walked into the office. Ginny hadn't been able to wait until he got to work before flooing over to Hermione's office to share the news with her. And Hermione in turn hadn't been able to wait more than half a second before calling him in her own excitement. Harry laid his hand on the door to his and Ron's latest office and allowed it to scan his palm print as he struggled to hear Hermione through the crackling of his phone. After being taken apart and put back together eleven times, not to mention its age, it was beginning to lose a bit of its luster.

"I just got into the office, Hermione, so I've got to go. I'll stop by later, though!" he said, as he dropped his stack of papers onto his desk.

Ron rolled around to look at him. "You're stopping by and talking to Hermione on the phone? What happened?"

Harry laughed. He was so happy, he couldn't help it. "I do do those things normally, you know. But today is special. Ginny found out she's pregnant!"

Ron jumped to his feet. "What?" he shouted.

The smile dropped from Harry's face and he stared in shock. Sure, Ron had shown some resistance to his and Ginny's relationship in the beginning, but he'd always been supportive since. He couldn't understand where this was coming from.

"What's the problem?"

"You're kidding me! The problem is that now Hermione is going to be all baby this and baby that. It's all she's going to want to talk about! Then the next thing you know, _I'm_ the bad guy because she's not pregnant yet! Well, not this time!" He grabbed his coat off the rack.

Harry was completely baffled. "Where are you going?"

"To get Hermione pregnant before she can start complaining!"

"Umm… Ron… I don't think it works that way."

"Well, I'm going to make it work that way. Cover for me."

And he was gone. Harry glanced at the stack of forms on his desk and sighed, shaking his head. Someday, he was sure he would finally get used to Ron's thought process.

* * *

The next time it happened Harry was lounging in his chair, trying very hard to drown out the bustle of people around him in his and Ron's small department. He was flipping idly through his magazine with his cellphone pressed to his ear.

"Oh, it was no big deal, Hermione. I was happy to help out. Alright, well thanks for calling. Bye." He closed his phone.

Ron turned towards him. "What were you and Hermione talking about?"

Harry flipped a page in his magazine. "She was just calling to say how nice she thought it was that Ginny and I babysat Freddie last weekend so that George and Angelina could have a little time to themselves."

"You did what?" Ron shouted, causing several nearby assistants to jump. "When will you learn, Harry? You can't just go doing nice stuff like that and letting Hermione find out! She's going to be on at me now until I do the same!"

"Sorry," Harry said sheepishly.

Ron sighed exasperatedly. "Are you and Ginny doing anything of importance next week?"

"No, why?"

"Because you're going on vacation. Hermione and I will babysit the kids."

Ron headed towards the door. "Cover for me, I'm going to get you the time off."

Harry waited until Ron had left the room before slipping the broken cellphone back into his pocket. After being taken apart nineteen times, the poor thing had finally given up. But Ron didn't know that, and Harry still kept it as a prop for times just such as these. He turned back to his magazine with a grin and continued to look for a nice vacation spot for him and Ginny.

As he imagined Ginny in Hawaii in her bikini with no children to distract her, Harry decided covering for Ron wasn't so bad after all.

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**I hope you all enjoyed it! If you have any thoughts you'd like to share or words you'd like me to write, leave me a review! I really appreciate them! Have a great weekend everyone!**


	3. Intended

***Word: Intended* This drabble takes place post-series. I always felt like Harry and the Dursleys had a more complicated relationship than we got to see in the books. Yes, the Dursleys were cruel people, but they were still the only family Harry had. I never felt like he would completely be able to let them go. This story explores that idea. Enjoy!**

I always intended to make amends.

I thought that once the war was over and my life had finally settled down there would be time for me to deal with my emotions and finally come to terms with the pain my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin had caused me. In my mind, I had imagined calling them up and, after we'd all faced death in the war, we would be able to put aside our differences and be a family of sorts. But I bought a house, and started a career, and got a steady girlfriend, and I never made that call. The days flew by and it always seemed there was a reason why today was not the day. There was an emergency at work, or Mrs. Weasley wanted me to come and visit, or Kreacher needed help cleaning the house. Every now and then, Ginny would ask me about the call, and I would convince myself that I would make it soon, but then the next thing I knew it had been years since the end of the war and I had still not spoken to them.

I always intended to get back in contact.

I realized that when Ginny and I were composing the guest list for our wedding and she asked if I wanted to invite them. She asked it gently, and I felt a surge of gratefulness that she understood how hard this was for me, how complicated my emotions were. I knew she couldn't forgive the Dursleys for what they did to me, but the fact that she was willing to invite them to our wedding anyways, that she understood why this was so important to me, meant more to me than she would ever know. I opened my mouth, fully intending to say yes, but nothing came out. I choked on air for a second and my mouth opened and closed, and I fell even more in love with her when she just looked at me with concern and didn't laugh at how ridiculous I must look. For a long moment we sat like that, her watching me as I struggled to get past my emotional difficulties and respond. Eventually I gave up and changed the subject to flowers. And she let it go.

I always intended to have a polite relationship with them, even if it was just a phone call on major events.

When my first child was born, it seemed like the perfect occasion to begin that relationship. I could call them to tell them about him or, if I couldn't quite face that, I could send them a note. As I watched my wife cuddling our newborn son to her chest, I realized that I wanted them to know, that I wanted to share this miracle with the only blood relatives I had. But when Ginny's eyes met mine and I saw the question in them, it all suddenly became very real and I knew that, despite my intentions, I wasn't able to face that contact. And so the years would pass, and they would bring with them the joy of my second son and my beautiful daughter, but never the family that had parted ways with me so long ago.

It was only when I answered the door that Christmas morning five years later that I realized that my intentions had never really been true. I stood in that doorway and the sounds of festive Christmas carols, my sons shouting excitedly and ripping wrapping paper off boxes, and my wife soothing our daughter faded into the background. The smells of cinnamon rolls, fresh cookies, and the huge turkey that was already in the oven cooking for dinner that night disappeared. My vision tunneled, and I no longer saw the sparkling heaps of snow or the twinkling Christmas lights on the houses in the distance. Suddenly, all I was aware of was my Uncle Vernon, looking oddly small and sheepish for a man his size, my Aunt Petunia, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, and my cousin Dudley, his face bright red with embarrassment. As my shock began to dissipate, I felt a warm feeling start to bubble up from the pit of my stomach and I wondered if we would have enough turkey to add three more plates to the table that night. It was in that moment that I finally understood my emotions.

I always intended to go back. But I guess what I really needed was for them to come to me.

**AN: Thank you to everyone who has given these drabbles a chance so far! I hope that you have all enjoyed it. Please leave me a review and let me know what you thought. And if you have a word for me to write about, let me know! Goodbye until next week!**


	4. Identity

**Hey everyone! Sorry this is a bit late. It was actually finished yesterday morning but then I had an appendicitis scare and completely forgot to post it until now. I'm off to the clinic once this is posted- cross your fingers for not appendicitis!**

****Word: Identity** This one is post-series as well (that seems to be popular with me lately). I always thought that it would be difficult for Harry to go on with his life after Voldemort died since his entire life before that had revolved around Voldemort. This drabble is taking a look at that idea. Enjoy!**

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From the moment I learnt that I shared a connection with Voldemort, I was determined to rid myself of it. I didn't want my identity to be created by his. When I finally destroyed the piece of his soul within me, I was sure that my life had finally taken a happy turn, that I would finally be able to be myself. And for a while, I was right. For a while I was just so relieved and so happy to not have my forehead constantly burning with pain, to not have to see flash after flash of death and torture, that I didn't even consider anything else. But all that changed one sunny Saturday afternoon in the backyard of 12 Grimmauld place.

I was lounging in a chair, reading a new quidditch book Ginny had leant me, when I noticed a small snake in the garden. I smiled and knelt down next to it. I told it that I wouldn't harm it and reached out my hand. Then something happened that was the last thing I expected.

It hissed and bit my finger.

I drew back my hand with a yelp and stared at the two small puncture wounds in shock. I had never been bitten by a snake before.

It hissed again and I noticed something else.

It was only hissing. I couldn't hear any words.

The realization struck me with the force of a lightning bolt.

I couldn't speak Parseltongue anymore.

I knelt, frozen next to the garden, as wave after wave of disbelief washed through me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't process. The concept made no sense to me. Well, on the surface it did. Rationally, I knew that I should've realized I wouldn't be able to speak Parseltongue. That ability didn't run in my family; I'd gotten the power from the piece of Voldemort's soul within me. I'd always known that. Logically then, when that piece of his soul was gone, so should be any abilities that came with it, such as the power to speak to snakes.

_Of course_ I couldn't speak Parseltongue.

But on a deeper level I just couldn't process the idea. I'd always been able to speak to snakes. It was something I'd taken for granted. Never a power that I'd particularly wanted, but something that just was, a part of me that I'd never questioned, never doubted. How was it possible for a piece of my identity to just disappear overnight?

For the next few weeks my life seemed to spiral. I stayed in the house and avoided as much human contact as I could. I needed some time to work things out with myself.

Suddenly, I began noticing quality after quality that I used to know about myself that now didn't appear to exist. My thoughts seemed duller, like they were missing the sharp intensity that used to go along with them. My moods never jumped with Voldemort's and my anger seemed to flare up less. Even my magic seemed weaker without his soul supplying its additional power.

There were other things too, things less related to his soul within me and more related to the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to with him hunting me. I would catch my muscles tightening, my adrenaline pumping, but there was never a trigger. My anxiety and fear was always present, but it couldn't find an outlet. I disapparated more than once at the sound of a mouse scurrying by. And the only goal I had ever had, that had always driven my every decision, was suddenly gone.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know who I was.

I'd always sworn that I was my own person, that my identity wasn't defined by my connection to Voldemort. But when that connection has been there since you can remember, when you've spent your whole life running from the same person, how can it not become a part of you? How do you let go of something you've never been without? How do you go on with a life you've never lived?

I had no answers for the questions. So instead I sat in the dark of my room and wrestled with my own soul.

Eventually my rescuer came in the form of the decrepit owl Errol. In his beak, he carried an invitation to a weekend at the Weasley's, written in Mrs. Weasley's familiar handwriting. I smiled and reread the letter four times, each time letting the joy and excitement creep up inside me. Those were two emotions Voldemort had never touched, that were the same with or without him. And I felt a little bit more like myself.

But really, it was only when I entered the Burrow's kitchen, when I saw the chaos of red hair and shouting voices, as I ducked a spell and was embraced by Mrs. Weasley who declared me 'peaky' and forced a sandwich into my hand, that I finally understood myself. Yes, there were many parts of my identity that had been determined by Voldemort, many things that had changed with his death. But the majority of my life, the happy parts, the parts that I wanted to live for, the parts that I wanted to be defined by, all came from me.

Many things had changed. But the best parts of my life were still the same.

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**Well, I hope you liked it! I still have no reviews though which makes me sad :(. If you have anything to say about these drabbles, I would love to hear it! Even a blank review is fine if you have nothing to say- just something to let me know you're reading is great! And, as always, I am taking word suggestions.**

**Also, I am going out of town next weekend for a wedding so next week's update is probably going to be a bit late. I'll aim to get it up for Monday or Tuesday. See you then! :D**


	5. Myth

**Hey everyone! Like I said last time, sorry about the wait on this update. I was out of town for a wedding. Also, it turns out I DID have appendicitis and I had to get surgery, so that slowed down the writing process as well. But the next drabble has finally arrived! Enjoy :)!**

****Word: Myth** This drabble takes place pre-series. Hermione is my favorite character, so I really wanted to write something from her POV. Also, I've always been curious about how the Muggleborns handle finding out about Hogwarts (mostly because I was hoping for a Hogwarts letter myself lol). The result? A drabble about Hermione receiving her letter. Read on!**

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"Hermione, what was in that letter?"

I hear my Mom in the hallway but I don't respond. Can't respond. I stare down at the letter gripped in my shaking hands.

_Dear Miss Granger,_

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

I won the school spelling bee last year and knew more words than any of my classmates, but I still couldn't get that sentence to make sense.

Witchcraft and wizardry?

Magic was a myth. I knew that. A lot of the other kids at my school still believed in magic, but I wasn't like them. I had considered the logic of magic four years ago and had come to the conclusion that it could not exist.

There was no way Santa Claus could make it to every house in the world in one night. Bunnies had live babies; they couldn't lay eggs, and especially not chocolate ones. And if cupid really shot you with an arrow, you would probably die, and at the very least you'd have to go to the hospital.

So how could I explain the very real letter in my hands?

My first thought was that it was a joke. But I didn't have any friends at school, so I couldn't think who it would be from.

I almost hoped it was a cruel prank being played on me, but I didn't have any enemies at school either. The only thing the other kids knew about me was that I was the smart girl with bushy hair and buck teeth.

None of them would have bothered to do this.

But the letter wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

I knew how magic tricks were done. My parents took me to my first and only show when I was seven years old, at a small carnival passing through town. They sighed and rolled their eyes when we left and I turned to them and told them that I was sure the show was fake. I was expecting them to be impressed, to be thankful that I had opened their eyes to a silly show they clearly believed in, but my mother just scooped me up and said, "I know, sweetie, but sometimes I wish you had a little more magic in your life."

I didn't understand what she meant by that. Magic wasn't real, so it had no place in life. I thought that I just needed to make my parents understand that, and then they'd see that I was right. So I set out to figure out how the magic tricks were done. It took me a couple weeks worth of trips to the town's library after school, but eventually I managed it.

That night, I held a magic show for my parents. When I invited them, their eyes lit up and I knew that I had finally done the right thing.

So I performed the tricks and they clapped and cheered and then I showed them the real way they were done. They seemed confused and my Dad said, "But Hermione, you're not supposed to show how the tricks are done. It's supposed to be magic!"

It was my turn to be confused. "But Daddy, Mommy, I'm trying to show you that they're fake, so that you understand that magic's not real!"

My parents sighed again and it seemed like I heard that noise a lot. "Okay, well thank you for showing us, baby," my Mom said and kissed me on the cheek. My Dad smiled at me. And yet I couldn't help but feel like I'd disappointed them somehow.

Would they be proud when they saw this letter? Would they see it as proof that they were right all along? I wanted to find a way to prove that it was fake before I showed them, before they got their hopes up and I had to tear them down again.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and began examining the letter. It was written on paper thicker than the stuff I had in my notebook at school. The writing was in something that looked like the paint the other kids used sometimes in art class. I refused to use the paint, and the teacher let me draw instead. Painting was for babies, I liked to draw my pictures with the orange pencils Mommy bought for me. She'd asked if I wanted to buy some sparkly ones, but that was just silly. All the adults I knew used orange pencils, and so I would too. But I'd never met an adult who had writing like that on the letter. It was loopy and scratchy. At the same time, it looked fancy and old. I'd never seen anyone write anything like this.

And so, the only conclusion I could come up with was that this letter came from somewhere or someone I'd never come close to experiencing before. But what? Who?

The word 'magic' seemed to flash across my mind in the big letters Mommy used on the posters for our yard sale, but I pushed it away. Magic was a myth. Something from the fairytales Mom and Dad used to read to me before I started insisting on history books. Now my princesses fought wars and were forced into marriage, instead of fighting evil witches and finding princes. And that was how I liked it. Because that was what was real. That was what adults read.

But there was a tiny part of me, a part that I had never met, a part that probably only came into being when I opened that letter, that hoped that I was wrong, that hoped that the letter was real.

Then I heard a loud crack and looked up into the brown eyes of an adult unlike any I'd seen before. He was wearing a bright green top hat that was slightly lopsided and matching green robes that were looking windswept.

I knew better than to trust strangers, so I backed up on my bed, but there was something in the kind understanding in his smile that made me feel like I'd finally found where I belonged.

That man was named Jack Fowler and was a friend of Professor McGonagall's, the woman who wrote the letter still clutched in my hands. That man would forever change my life.

The next few weeks would pass by in a blur of impossible magical acts, stories about a beautiful castle, and explanations that couldn't make sense. The only things that I remembered clearly from that time were my mother's happy tears and my father's blinding smile. They were so relieved, so on board with the whole thing.

Me? I wasn't so sure. The situation seemed to be like one of those fairytales, come to life around me. And, as I already knew, those fairytales didn't really exist. But no matter how many times I closed my eyes and pinched my arm, I never woke up. The magic around me never disappeared. I was lost and confused and I didn't know what I thought about any of this, so I threw myself into the one aspect of this mess that made sense to me.

Jack had said that Hogwarts was a school, where I would study and learn just like I did now. I buried myself in my new school books, learning anything and everything about this world. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was how to learn and how to be prepared. As I read, the facts began to fall into place and magic began to make more sense. There were rules and laws behind it, there was more to it than waving a wand and saying some funny words. There were things that were possible and things that weren't. And there were logical explanations explaining why. I liked that. And so I read.

But it wasn't until I finally looked up into the ceiling of Hogwarts' Great Hall, it wasn't until I saw for myself the magic I had read so much about, that I finally understood that incomprehensible sentence my Mom had said all those years ago. In that moment, I was so glad that I had some magic in my life.

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**AN: I hope you liked it! Please leave me a review and let me know what you thought. And if you have any word requests, I'd love to take them! Thanks guys, I'll be back Friday!**

**Special thanks to my two reviewers last week, PotterheadFangirl14 and an anonymous reviewer. I loved hearing your thoughts!**


	6. Benkinersophobia

**Hey everyone! Here's the next installment. Special thanks to LittleLionGirl for requesting the word. I figured I'd give this word a definition too, since I needed one to know what it was lol. How many of you had heard of this before now? I know I hadn't! And hands up if you definitely had it as a child!**

***Word: Benkinersophobia- the fear of not receiving a Hogwarts letter on your eleventh birthday* This drabble is pre-series. It is about Neville's childhood and his fear of being a muggle. I had to go back and reread bits of the first book to get the facts right for this one. Talk about nostalgia! I hope you enjoy it!**

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Benkinersophobia. It was a word that every child in the wizarding world knew.

Benkinersophobia: the fear of disappointing your parents.

Benkinersophobia: the fear of being mocked by your friends.

Benkinersophobia: the fear of being alone and useless in a world of magic.

Benkinersophobia: the fear of not receiving a Hogwarts letter on your eleventh birthday.

There was a time when the other children in my wizarding community used to use that word. But not anymore. Now they used a word that had become synonymous with it. My name.

Benkinersophobia: Neville Longbottom.

It was a running joke amongst our group. If someone took an abnormally long time to display magic, you'd hear, "I was afraid he was going to pull a Neville." If someone burst into tears because they were nervous before their eleventh birthday, the whispers would sound, "I heard she had a Neville Longbottom."

I wished with all my heart that I could say it was just a joke- that there was no real base of truth in it. But I couldn't.

My parents are Frank and Alice Longbottom, both aurors who were tortured for information on You-Know-Who's whereabouts. They never gave in. That's the part that most people remember. They were talented and brave and all around incredible people.

But what I remember most clearly is that they went insane. They no longer know who I am. I wonder if they would be disappointed if they could see me now: the son of two of the most famous witches and wizards in the world, who hasn't displayed one iota of magic in the first eight years of his life. Sometimes I ask them. But they never respond.

I've heard the whispers by the other adults in my community. Wondering when, if, I will show magic. Asking how it is possible I could be a squib, given that my parents were so talented. But it is my grandmother, my guardian, who is the most vocal.

She speaks loudly about my lack of magical ability. She asks no one in particular _what oh what my son would think of the boy_. I know that I'm disappointing her. I know that she's glad that my parents aren't aware of what's happening, that they don't have to bear witness to the shame I'm bringing to the family.

I wish and I wish and I wish that I could do something right, that I could show even the tiniest bit of magic. I stay up every night until the first star comes out, and I wish using the song my Gran says my Mom would sing to me at night.

"_Star light, star bright,_"

When my Great-Uncle Algie invites me and Gran for a picnic at Blackpool pier, I don't think much of it. I decide it will be nice to get out of the house and get some fresh air, even if it is a bit chilly out. Gran doesn't often like to go outside. But when we arrive and I see that determined look on Great-Uncle Algie's face, I freeze and all the excitement drains out of me. I've seen that look before. It's the look he gets before he's going to do something drastic to try and force magic out of me.

I wait, frozen, my muscles tense. But Great-Uncle Algie just unfolds a blanket and starts unpacking the food.

"Sit down, Neville, why are you standing there like a great buffoon?"

I start at Gran's voice and take my seat next to her. I'm not sure why I need to be there, though, because the conversation is between Great-Uncle Algie and Gran and I am clearly not being invited to join in. I stuff myself with all sorts of pastries, knowing that only too soon I will be back at home eating Gran's healthy snacks to _help you grow strong like your father_. I try to tune out their conversation, but it quickly turns to a topic I'm far too used to.

"I'm just saying, Augusta, maybe if you pushed the boy a little harder he'd finally show some of his magical talent. You're being too soft."

"Excuse me, Algie, but I raised Frank did I not? And was he not one of the most brilliant wizards of all time?"

"Well, something's clearly gone wrong with this one. Maybe you're just losing your touch in your old age."

"Perhaps it is not my fault, but the boy's! You cannot force talent out if there is no talent there in the first place!"

The custard cream seems to be stuck in my throat and I blink back tears. I just want to make them proud.

Great-Uncle Algie scoffs. "With parents like his? There _has_ to be talent, Augusta. You said it yourself, Frank was one of the most brilliant wizards of all time! And darling Alice was right there with him!"

"Oh sure, you can criticize all day long, but you'd have no more luck with it than me. What would you have me do?"

I'm pretty sure the question was rhetorical, but Great-Uncle Algie answers anyways. He scoops me up by the back of my collar and I spit the custard cream on the blanket in shock. And then the next thing I know I'm underwater.

_The pier_, I think, _he threw me in the pier!_

My instinct is to fight, and initially I struggle against the current pulling at me, trying to surface, but then I force myself to calm down. Great-Uncle Algie's not trying to kill me, he just wants me to do some magic. So I screw up my eyes against the water and struggle not to breathe as I wait. The current tugs at my limbs, pulling me in all directions. My clothes are soaked and weighing me down. Slowly I'm sinking, being pulled farther and farther away from shore. My lungs are burning and every cell in my body is screaming at me to fight, that I need oxygen. Still, I wait. But nothing happens.

The next thing I know, I have drawn in a breath against my will and my lungs are burning worse than ever. I'm choking and my limbs are flailing, but I can't fight the current and I keep going deeper and deeper. My vision starts to darken and I look up to the surface, to the air I so desperately need. From this point of view, the sky looks dark and the sun looks like a tiny star, far in the distance. I see a hand reach for me, but I don't register what that means. My mind is on auto-pilot and I'm seeing a star, so my thoughts form the familiar words as I cast the same wish I always do.

"_The first star I see tonight;"_

Gran pulled me out of the pier that day and got me breathing again alright. She smacked Great-Uncle Algie on top of the head with her handbag for nearly drowning me, but she did seem to appreciate the sentiment behind my near death experience. I didn't see Great-Uncle Algie for another couple of months after that. Perhaps he was embarrassed by nearly killing his great-nephew. More likely he just felt I'd earned a break from his attempts to make me do magic.

And I was left with Gran's musings about the shame of having a Muggle grandson.

Eventually, Great-Uncle Algie came round for tea at a small family get-together. His break from attacking me only seemed to have made him more determined. The next thing I knew, I was hanging outside Gran's bedroom window by my ankles.

The fear stuck me hard and tears poured off my face. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be safely on the ground again. But instead I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I knew this would never stop, I could never make my family proud, unless I managed to do some magic. And even if I didn't like it, Great-Uncle Algie's methods were the best way to do that. So I dug deep inside of me and searched for any bit of magic the fear might have unearthed.

I searched and I searched for any spark, any sizzle.

I imagined the magic flowing through my veins.

I tried to feel everything, to embrace my fear.

But nothing happened.

The tears began to pour faster and I scrunched my eyes up so tight that I began to see stars. And, through my misery, I couldn't help but cast a last, desperate wish on them.

"_I wish I may, I wish I might,"_

That was when I heard my Great-Auntie Enid offering Great-Uncle Algie a meringue. He'd always had a sweet tooth. And suddenly, there was nothing holding me up.

The wind whistled past me and there was a swooping feeling in my stomach as I fell. I heard my Great-Auntie Enid scream. And I stopped trying to make the magic happen. I stopped trying to be someone I wasn't. If this was my final moment, I wanted to be proud of who I was. I wanted to believe my parents would be proud of me.

I hit the Earth… and didn't die. I was back in the air again, and then against the ground, and then back in the air. And then I realized I was bouncing. My eyes flew open and I wondered if my Great-Aunt or Uncle had managed to cast a spell while I was falling. But no, I knew, just knew, that this was my own magic.

Pride and excitement swelled within me and I was happier than I could ever remember being.

I had done it. I had made them proud. Finally, all my wishes had come true.

But there was a tiny part of me that was whispering a small postscript in the back of my mind. That part wished that I could've found a way, some way, to make them proud without the magic.

"_Have the wish I wish tonight."_

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**AN: Well, I hope you liked it! I'm not entirely sure how I felt about it. I liked the idea but I'm not sure I got Neville's emotions right. He's definitely a complicated character to write. But live and learn, right? Maybe next time I write his POV it'll be easier. Please leave a review and let me know what you thought! And if you have any word requests, I'd love to take them! I have two more to write first, but any more I get will all be added to the list! Thanks for reading :D**


	7. Ectopic

**Hi everyone! Here is the next drabble! Special thanks again to LittleLionGirl for her second word request.**

****Word: Ectopic- occuring in an abnormal position or place; displaced** This one takes place during Harry's sixth year, from when he is in detention for attacking Malfoy to when he kisses Ginny. It is a little different from the others I've written so far, and I hope you all enjoy it.**

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I watched my wife who was watching our son being watched by the man who I knew now had always been in love with her.

Yeah, it was messed up.

Unfortunately, it was also typical.

Welcome to the afterlife of James Potter.

I stood at my wife's shoulder. She must have known I was there, but she didn't turn around. She just continued to stare through the large round window, one of many scattered throughout the spirit world. Together we stood in silence and watched the scene before us.

Harry was clearly in detention. He was copying old records slowly and tediously. Every few minutes, he would glance at the clock as though dying to be out of that room. Personally, I couldn't blame him. I'd been in detention more than my fair share of times, and I knew how awful it could be. Combine that with Snape's presence, and I didn't think Voldemort himself could have come up with a worse punishment.

The professor in question was watching Harry. From my point of view that was obvious, though Harry probably didn't notice. He was sitting at his desk, a stack of essays in front of him, and a quill writing away in his hand. But his eyes were not on the paper, and I felt bad for the student whose paper he was marking, because in his distraction Snape could hardly be giving a fair grade. Instead, his eyes were lifted the tiniest bit, just enough to watch Harry.

Not for the first time, I wondered what he saw when he looked at my son.

Since I died I learnt more about the circumstances that led to my death. It's funny how after you're dead all the mysteries you encountered in life open up before you. It wasn't hard to find my ancestors, and even some bored spirits of strangers, who had watched my life unfold. They told me about Wormtail and Voldemort and Snape. Especially Snape. I knew now what I had never even guessed at in life: Snape was, and is, completely in love with my wife, he gave Voldemort the prophecy that led to mine and Lily's deaths, he begged Voldemort for her life and, when that failed, changed sides. He hated me. He loved Lily. But how did he feel about our son?

On one hand, he treated Harry horribly and unfairly. It was understandable, I suppose. Harry looks identical to me, save for his eyes which he got from his mother and the scar that he got from Voldemort. When Snape looks at him, he must see not only Lily's son, but Lily's son with me. Which means that Lily must have had sex with his sworn enemy. And the scar can only be a reminder of the mistake he made fifteen years ago that led to the love-of-his-life's death. So, in a way, Harry was just a human beacon taunting him and reminding him of his failures. How could he not hate him?

But on the other hand, he had also saved Harry's life. Harry's eyes and disposition were both clearly Lily's. And the only way that scar on his forehead could exist, the only way he could be sitting, living, breathing, in that room, is if Lily had given everything she had to protect him. If Snape truly loved Lily, how could he not love the person she cared about most?

Did he look at Harry and see my son, or hers?

As selfish as it was, there was a rather large part of me that hoped that Snape hated Harry. What, you may ask, could possibly make me wish for something that would only make my son's already difficult life even harder? Simple jealousy.

I knew that Lily loved me, but I also knew that there had been a time when she had loved Snape. I often wondered if, had Snape not called her a Mudblood on that fateful day in our fifth year, she would have managed to change his ways and they would have ended up together. I often wondered if he ever thought the same thing. And I often wondered if I should just ask her, but I never managed to get the words out.

As crazy as it might be, there was a part of me that was worried that if Lily saw all that Snape was willing to do for her, if she saw that he loved her son, protected him in ways I couldn't, she would fall in love with him again. Maybe, years from now, it wouldn't be me spending the afterlife with Lily and Harry, but Snape. Maybe he would become Lily's husband, Harry's father.

I couldn't even face that in my imagination.

With a jolt I realized how Snape must feel every day of his life.

So, yes, maybe it was selfish, but I couldn't deny that standing there with Lily, watching Snape gaze at my son unfathomably, I wanted to hit something. Instead, I contented myself with clenching my jaw and reminding myself that Lily was my wife, that Harry was my son, and that nothing could ever change that.

I was brought out of my thoughts when I saw Lily lift her hand out of the corner of my eye. She laid it flat against the glass-like substance that formed the window and leaned towards it as though she could fall through and be with her son.

The pain and longing on her face made me want to cry.

"It's the Quidditch final right now. Harry's worried because he knows everyone will blame him if they lose since he was in detention and couldn't play. And to top it off Ginny is playing seeker against Cho which is messing him up emotionally-"

"What?" I cut her off, and I knew she knew from my tone that I had one eyebrow raised even though we were both still staring at our son.

"Cho is his ex-girlfriend and Ginny is the girl he has a crush on now. I think he's hoping that if Ginny catches the snitch for Gryffindor they'll somehow end up together, because right now he's too nervous to ask her out since she's Ron's sister and he doesn't want to upset Ron."

I didn't say anything, but I felt my stomach drop as I realized just how long she must have been watching him to have learnt all of these intimate details.

She leaned closer as Harry glanced at the clock again, and, now that I knew what to look for, I realized the look on his face was part fear, part nervousness, and part desperation. He really did want to get out of there to find out what happened in the match.

"He's hurting," she whispered, her agony obvious.

"I think he's dealt with worse than nerves before, Lils."

"I know; that's why he deserves happiness now. He shouldn't be hurt. Not even the tiniest bit."

Suddenly, she frowned and her voice increased several levels in volume. "How could he _do_ this to him? To my son? Severus is _horrible_ to Harry for no reason. I don't understand. After everything, why would he try to hurt him?"

I wanted to encourage this line of thought, to make her resent Snape, but I loved her too much to do it. If I had a legitimate answer to this question that caused her so much distress, I had to give it.

And, as luck would have it, I got my answer right then.

Harry jumped slightly and his expression changed to discomfort. It was only the briefest reaction before he wiped his face blank again, but Lily and I saw it, and, judging by Snape's expression, so did he. The corners of Snape's lips lifted the tiniest bit and a smug look appeared in his eyes. I looked at the card Harry was holding for an explanation, and felt my own stomach flip.

_James Potter and Sirius Black. Apprehended using the Agrestus hex upon Julian Melantrope. Melantrope transfigured into a chicken. Double detention._

Anger surged within me. So that was Snape's game was it? Force Harry to learn all the horrible things his father and godfather had done? My fury made my hands shake. Not fury for myself, but for Harry. He was as kind as his mother had been, and I knew it disturbed him greatly to know the idiotic and horrible things I had done as a teenager. That had been obvious last year when he had been willing to risk capture by that cow Umbridge to speak to Sirius about me after seeing Snape's memory of me bullying him. I knew I had disappointed my son and I wished more than anything that I could go back in time and undo those acts, that I could've been a better person in my life, but I couldn't. All I could do was try to make up for it now. Besides, as a fifteen year old, the last thing on my mind was how my actions would affect any future children I might have. I wished that it was otherwise, but all the wishing in the world couldn't change the past.

I wanted to hate Snape for punishing not only me, but my son, and for trying to ruin a relationship between us before we'd even had a chance to make one, but I couldn't. For one, Snape wasn't telling Harry anything that was untrue. I really did do all those things. That was my own fault, not Snape's, and I had to deal with the consequences of it. More to the point, I could never hate Snape anyways. Not after all he had done to protect my son when I wasn't there.

I forced my voice to be steady and finally answered my wife's question.

"He's hurting Harry to hurt me, Lils. He will keep Harry alive and well for you, but he will make sure his life is as miserable as possible for me."

For a long moment she was silent. Then she whispered, "I will never be able to forgive him for it. Even if he is saving Harry's life… I just can't forgive him for being so terrible to my son."

I sighed and said the words I knew I must say, as much as I didn't want to, because I knew I loved Lily more than I hated Snape. "Don't be too hard on him, love. He's in an impossible situation. If he's nice to Harry, he gives in to me. If he's mean to him, he betrays you. No matter what he does, he loses. Remember that his life has been one long series of heartbreaking events. Admittedly some of those were his own fault, but he's trying to do the best he can to fix his mistakes now. Maybe he's messing up a bit with Harry in the short term, but he's human, and he's hurt, and he's entitled to slip up now and then. In the end, he is willing to save Harry's life at the price of his own. Just the same as we were."

She still didn't turn from the window, but I could hear the shock in her voice. "Since when did you become such a fan?"

I smiled and rested my head on her shoulder, my eyes, like hers, still locked on our son, who was now hurrying from Snape's office. "I'm not. I still think Snivellus is a twat." I practically felt her roll her eyes. "But looking at all those cards Harry was sorting makes me wish I could change the past and fix my mistakes, and I know how hard it is to accept that I can't. I understand that for Snape… well, it must be harder for him than anyone to accept his mistakes. If I can't forgive him, then there's no way for me to forgive myself."

She turned to me, a small smile on her face, but as her eyes finally unlocked from the window they became unfocused and dizzy. When she leaned in to kiss me she missed and nearly fell over. I laughed and caught her.

"Feeling a bit ectopic, are you?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Ectopic?"

"Bet you don't know what that means," I grinned at her.

She rolled her eyes at me again, even though the action seemed to make her dizzier. "It means out of place. Though normally it's used to describe one's organs, not state of mind. I'm just surprised _you_ know what it means."

"Hey, I do read you know!"

Her skepticism lay thickly between us. Then she said, "Word of the day toilet paper?"

I heaved a large sigh. "Sirius got it for me. When did you get so good at guessing?"

She laughed. "I've grown wise to your ways."

I was still holding her, steadying her, and as I realized that my grin faded.

"Lily, you can't keep watching him like this, you know that."

She stepped backwards out of my grasp. I reached out a hand to steady her as she swayed, but she regained her balance and slapped my hand away. "How can you even say that? He's our son! And yet you wander around with Sirius, laughing and joking, paying no attention to Harry while he goes through all these horrific events. You don't even seem to want to know him! You don't even seem to care about him! Tell me honestly, James, do you love our son or not because the way you're acting it doesn't look like it!"

For a long moment we stared at each other. Then she dropped her gaze.

"Sorry," she muttered, "that was uncalled for. I know you love him as much as I do."

"Lily, I know you love Harry. I know you're worried about him. I know you don't want to miss out on even one moment in his life. But spirits aren't meant to watch the living. You can't live in both worlds. Every time you look into the living world you fall a little more into limbo, you'll become a little more confused about who you are, and where you belong. And you'll miss out on parts of your own life. These windows are here for those times when we feel like we need a glimpse of those we left behind, not to watch a whole life. We can keep tabs on him and we will, we can be there for him when he needs us, but you need to learn to trust that he is a strong, independent person, and that he is going to be okay. Most of the time, he won't need us."

Tears filled her green eyes, making them seem to shine even brighter. "But what if he isn't okay?" She whispered. "What if he's there, and he needs me, and he's hurt, and I'm off, off laughing with you and Sirius or something and I don't even know that my baby is all alone wishing for me? What kind of mother does it make me if I'm not there for him whenever he needs me?"

I could have pointed out to her that there was little we could do for him even if he _did_ need us, trapped as we were in the spirit world, but I knew that that wouldn't help and it wasn't the point anyways. The point was that Lily was worried about Harry and the only way she could make herself feel better was to be as close to him as she could. I didn't know how to take her pain away, so I lifted my eyes from hers and looked over her head- and then I saw something that made me smile.

"Don't worry, I think he'll have someone else to be there for him…"

I turned her around and her jaw dropped.

Harry had just been tugged into the celebrating common room, the entire house cheering that they had won the Quidditch cup, and now he had his lips locked on Ginny Weasley's.

Lily laughed and her eyes lit up. "He'll be happy."

I nodded. "He'll be okay."

I put my arm around her shoulders, and she put hers around my waist, and together we walked away.

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**AN: Well, there you have it! I hope you liked it. Like I said, it's not like anything I've written before and, being from the point of view of dead parents, I thought I might struggle with it a bit (since I've never been dead or a parent), but I actually found it much easier to write than last chapter. And I found I had so much to say that this drabble is by far my longest yet, almost hitting one-shot territory. Very strange. Anyways, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, so please leave me a review! And as always, I will be accepting any word requests. Until next week! Bertle out!**


	8. Potatoes

**Sorry this is a day late, everyone! I had some unexpected company yesterday and worked today so I didn't have a lot of writing time. But I hope you enjoy it now that it's here! Special thanks for the third time to LittleLionGirl for her request! Also, special thanks to every single one of you who read this story last week. We nearly hit 100 views that one week, which was more than half the total number of views on the story before. So thanks! It means so much to me :).**

****Word: Potatoes** This drabble is post-series, set maybe a week or two after the final battle. I have been dying to write something from George's POV about living without his twin, and with this word I finally found my inspiration. I hope I got George's tone right (another difficult character for me to write) and that you all enjoy reading it!**

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I sat on the bench in the backyard and stared into the mass of vegetation my mother called a garden.

Vines tangled around the other plants and bushes. Weeds covered every inch of dirt. Thorns swayed threateningly in the breeze. Gnome holes were scattered throughout the chaos.

This was not a garden.

Well, maybe it was a garden, but Weasley-style.

Everything was always positive in our house. Those raggedy old clothes were of the finest quality. The house wasn't tilted, it was styled. And that wasteland of plants? That was a garden, dammit.

Mum led this optimism brigade. I think she was just really determined that if the family couldn't afford nice things, we would at least appreciate the things we had, and not wallow in self-pity. Didn't work so well on Ron and Percy, but the rest of us were okay with it. We let Mum have her way and force her delusions on us because we honestly didn't mind the poverty. All it meant to me and Fred was that we had to work to make our own names in this world and we didn't mind that. We wanted to gain our success by our own doing anyways. And besides, in order to have more money, we would have had to have had fewer siblings, and neither of us would've ever traded anything for our siblings.

Just as long as no one told them that.

And so, by Mum's demand, the garden was a garden. Lately though, Mum's cheery train had gotten a bit derailed. Just this morning in fact, she had actually _asked_ me if I was okay, instead of informing me I was with a scowl that dared me to argue. And not only had she asked, but she had asked in a whisper, tentative, scared. It was unheard of.

But I suppose you change when one of your sons dies.

I never answered Mum's question, and she hadn't seemed surprised. Or maybe she just thought the answer was so obvious that I didn't really have to give it. Of course I wasn't okay; my twin had just died.

Whatever her reasons though, Mum let me escape the kitchen without harassment and make my way out of the house. Blindly I walked and somehow found myself here, staring at weeds and thinking about Weasley-style gardens. It was the only coherent thought I could think, because my emotions were a mushy bog of uncertainty and I couldn't decipher any of them. Mum's question had hit me hard, because I realized that I didn't know the answer. But my twin had just died. How could I not be sure I wasn't okay? Why was I sitting in the garden, thinking about plants?

What the bloody hell was _wrong with me?_

My breathing hitched and finally one of my feelings bubbled up. Guilt. I should know I wasn't okay.

I tried to make myself feel better by telling myself that it wasn't that I _was okay_, per say, but that I didn't understand what I was feeling. My emotions were confused and messed up and drowning me. And I supposed that was an appropriate feeling to have in response to my twin's death.

My breathing slowed.

And then I really started to wonder about the question.

Was I okay?

I considered it systematically. On one hand, no, I was quite certain I was not okay. I had spent my entire life with Fred. Every decision I made, every thought I had, I considered him, because he was implicated by default. I had never imagined a life without him. Never even thought it was possible. We were one and a whole, never meant to be separated. From the moment our zygote (thanks Percy, for the grade 10 biology lesson) split, we seemed to be trying to return together, to merge back into one person.

We almost succeeded too, as much as one could without super glue. Fred and George. George and Fred. Our names were always together. Though his tended to go first. I wondered why that was and sent a quick glare to the sky, where I imagined him sitting laughing at me for feeling all… well feelings-y. But then I shook my head. Back to the question.

No one ever expected to see one of us without the other, probably because we never were. We shared a bedroom, a dorm room, a quidditch locker room. Friends, relatives, enemies. Dreams, goals, plans. The shop. In a way, we could have been the same person, and I hoped that nobody would miss Fred less because they still had me and so it was like he was still here.

I shook my head sharply again, this time imagining him snorting condescendingly at me. I could nearly hear him say, _Come on, don't be stupid. They couldn't forget me; I'm the good looking one_.

I smiled. No, no one would ever be able to forget Fred.

But I wondered what that meant for me. If I could never forget my twin, would I ever be able to move on with my life? How could I ever get married without him as my best man? How could I ever have kids, knowing they could never meet their Uncle Fred? And how could I possibly run the shop, and make inventions, and make a god damned _career_ without him by my side?

I'd never had to make decisions on my own before. I'd never had to live on my own before.

But now I would have to. I would have to run the shop on my own. Because I would never be able to talk to him again.

My twin was dead.

Fred was dead.

He was _gone_.

And with that thought, my emotions began to surge up through my stomach, into my throat, choking me, and finally hitting my eyes, making the ridiculous tears well up and slide down my face.

The emotions, once so confusing and unnamed, presented themselves to me, flipping by so fast I barely had time to catch them all.

Confusion. Fear. Sadness. Grief. Misery. Loss. Anger. Terror. Panic. And pain.

Most of all, pain.

For a long time I sat on that bench, my face clutched in my hands, rocking back and forth as I sobbed loudly. I was aware of nothing except my own agony. I was blinded by panic and pain. I wanted my twin.

I just wanted my twin back.

Oh God, please just give him back.

I would do anything, anything.

Oh God, Fred.

My twin.

I have no idea how long I sat there, hysterical, and generally making a mess of my face, but at some point I heard the patter of feet. I looked up, glaring, ready to tell off whatever family member it was who was intruding on my grief.

But when I gazed around the yard, I didn't see the Weasley trademark flaming red hair. In fact, I didn't see anyone. My crying softened in my confusion and I was able to hear the noise again. A faint patter, but definitely of feet. I followed the noise down to the ground, near the garden, and saw a particularly fat gnome attempting to catch a beetle that was running away from it.

I watched the gnome chase after the beetle and listened to his mini feet, smacking sharply against the ground.

And I realized I must be really out of it because since when could any Weasley _patter_? If anything, we stomped.

The gnome leaped forward to land on the beetle, but tripped and rolled down a small hill. His robust stomach burst free of his tightly tucked shirt and spilled over his pants. He started swearing and began to tuck his belly back in to his clothing. It looked like quite the challenge.

I couldn't tell you why exactly, maybe just because it was the sort of scene that once would have had me and Fred rolling around in hysterical laughter, or maybe just because it was so normal, so innocent, after all the horrible things that had happened, but suddenly the other side of my emotions began to stir, and I realized why I wasn't sure I wasn't okay. Because I was feeling things that were good, too.

Hope. Trust. Love. Affection. Happiness. Freedom. Warmth. And amusement.

Most of all, amusement.

I wanted to understand these emotions better. I wanted to know how I could feel this way with my twin dead. So, before he could even finish tucking in his belly, I scooped the gnome up by his ankle. Sure, I could have done it easier by magic, but that wouldn't feel right. Fred and I had always caught the gnomes by hand, ever since we were children.

The gnome struggled in my grasp. His belly had fallen out of his shirt again when he was flipped upside down, and that seemed to annoy him more than anything else. His swearing got even more colorful and he gnashed his teeth, trying to get his little chompers into my finger. His roundness got in the way though, and he couldn't quite reach. That would teach him to snack on so many beetles.

I took my seat again on the bench and examined the small, struggling creature, trying to figure out what it was about him that had brought up these positive emotions.

He seemed rather unremarkable for a gnome, which meant remarkably ugly. Dark brown mottled skin, stubby little limbs, dirty green clothes, and a big, bald, potato-like head.

I wrinkled my nose at the little round dirtball. They really were ugly things. But that was part of what made them so fun.

I remembered a Christmas many years ago, when Fred and I were only five, and we were just starting to hone our joke instincts. When Mum had sent us out to help our older brothers for the first time with the Christmas morning make-the-house-look-nice-de-gnoming, we were so excited we could barely sit still. Charlie caught the first gnome and showed it to us, and I can still remember the wonder I felt, mirrored in Fred's face. They were ugly. They were mean. And they were marvelous. Fred and I loved them from first sight. All little boys loved gross things and the amount of practical jokes we could pull with such creatures seemed endless.

So once Percy gave us a lecture on how to catch them and Bill had taken over and actually _shown_ us how to do it, we set our minds to the task and set about catching the gnomes. Fred and I were not stupid. We were just lazy. But when we wanted something, when we set our minds to it, we could really accomplish things. It wasn't by accident that we would eventually become the best gnome catchers in the family. Whenever one of our older brothers was watching we would dump the gnomes over the garden wall, but they weren't watching much. Catching gnomes could be very frustrating, and they were chasing the creatures all over the place. And so Fred and I kept a secret stash of gnomes, shoved into an old rusted cauldron in the yard.

That night, we painstakingly stuffed the gnomes into a large cloth potato bag. It wasn't easy; they were quite determined to not go in the sack and both Fred and I ended up with hands covered in gnome bites. Fred even managed to get one on the end of his nose somehow. But eventually we had a potato sack stuffed so full of gnomes that they could barely squirm. And when you looked inside, well, it looked exactly like a sack of potatoes, what with their giant potato heads and all. Then we dragged the bag downstairs, waited for Ginny to start to wail (she always did at that age- what a set of lungs that girl had), and then slipped into the kitchen once Mum left. We swapped the bag of potatoes she had dug up from the garden to cook for Christmas dinner with our gnome sack and then snuck out, giggling in whispers.

For hours we watched Mum in the kitchen, waiting for her to get to the potatoes. And the prank never once lost its appeal. We were so excited, we thought we were so clever, that nothing could dampen our spirits. And eventually we were rewarded for our patience.

Mum dumped the bag of potato-gnomes into a large pot of boiling water, only to have the gnomes, now free of the bag, and none too happy to find themselves being boiled, leap every which way out of the pot and into the kitchen. Mum screamed. The rest of the family came running. Ginny wailed some more. The gnomes ran wild, destroying and trampling whatever they met. And Fred and I sat, crouched in the hallway, laughing hysterically at the chaos.

Finally Dad immobilized the gnomes and Mum swept them outside with a broom. None of them had been harmed (besides a scalded behind or two) and the kitchen, while a mess, was not too damaged. Really, in comparison to some of the pranks we would pull in the future, it was nothing, but it was the first, and so the punishment was worse than anything we would receive when we were older. Mum shouted. Dad scolded and acted disappointed. Mum shouted. Percy yelled that the gnomes had _ruined_ his favorite book. Mum shouted again. And then we were bustled off to our rooms without dinner Christmas night.

But we thought the scene had been so funny that we really couldn't regret it. Every time we looked at each other we burst into laughter all over again. And once Bill snuck us up some food and our stomachs stopped grumbling, we really started to be proud of ourselves.

"Hey, Georgie?" Fred whispered to me late that night as we lay in our beds in the dark.

"Yeah, Freddo?"

"What do you think… about opening a joke shop. Just the two of us. Well, maybe Bill would get a discount since he brought us food."

I was silent for a moment. "Fred… we're five." I even held up five fingers to emphasize my point.

Fred threw a shoe at my head. "Not now, stupid. I mean, when we're older. As a job."

I thought about that. "Are you allowed to own a joke shop for a job? I thought jobs were supposed to be boring, like working at the ministry."

"Nah, that's just Dad. Look at Mr. Fortescue. He owns an ice cream shop as a job."

I grinned at him. "Good point."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What do you think? About owning a joke shop?"

I threw the shoe back at him. "Well duh we're gonna do it."

I brought myself back to the present and watched the fat gnome I held now, still squirming and trying to sink his teeth into my hand. I wondered if he cared that it was one of his kind, the first gnome shown to us that day by Charlie, which had started mine and my twin's lives on the path we had taken. I wondered if he could possibly understand the significance of that moment to me, to Fred.

But of course he couldn't, he didn't, because he was just a gnome. Just an ugly, angry, simple, absolutely hilarious creature that Fred and I had both always loved.

It may not make much sense to anyone but me, but it was right then, sitting on a rusting bench in a Weasley-style garden, holding the fattest gnome I had ever seen upside down by the ankle, listening to it curse me with every swear word it knew, that I finally came to terms with my twin's death. I had my memories of Fred that couldn't die. That wouldn't fade. Our first prank would be blazed in my mind until I was grey-haired and deaf. And Fred would always be waiting for me, watching, laughing at my idiocy and my walking stick. Until I crossed over myself and beat him with it, that is. With Fred's memory, I would get by. I would tell the stupid stories I knew he would want to tell at my wedding. I would read my children bedtime stories about mine and their Uncle Fred's best pranks. And every decision I made in our shop, I would make remembering the shared dream we had at the age of five.

Finally, I had an answer to that damned question.

I wasn't okay. Not yet. Maybe not for a while. But someday I would be. And I knew that when that day came, Fred would be okay with it too.

I stood, a grin on my face, and chucked the gnome over the garden wall.

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**AN: For some reason I'm oddly fond of that last sentence. It just seems very Fred and George-y to me to nonchalantly chuck a gnome after having a deep thought :). Well, I hope you liked it! Please leave me a review letting me know what you thought! I love to hear it! And any word requests are always welcome too. Thanks everyone! I'll be back next week!**


	9. Hope and Death

**Alright everyone, here is the next drabble! Sorry that it's a day late again (what is wrong with me these past couple weeks?). I wish I had some great excuse like my laptop busted or my internet went out or something, but I don't. Honest truth? I felt like crap yesterday and didn't want to write. Sometimes I force myself to write anyways, but I felt so sick that I was worried that if I tried I would just throw something down quickly and it wouldn't even be half decent. So I decided it was best all around to give myself a day off. But I kicked it into gear today and finished this one! I hope you enjoy it, despite it being a tad late!**

****Word: Hope and Death** Confused? I know, I know, I normally only do one word at a time, but this request (from LittleLionGirl again- thank you so much for all your requests and reviews!) was for either Hope or Death, as she felt both were important themes throughout the series. I thought about it, but I couldn't pick only one. So then I started to wonder if there was a way to combine the two. The result is this drabble: set in the seventh book, during the Battle of Hogwarts. It is supposed to be Molly's thoughts during that battle and about the tragedies she'd experienced before. Read on my darlings!**

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Hope leads to death.

I learnt that lesson many years ago, when I lost my brothers in the first war against You-Know-Who. Back then I had hoped and wished that my family would make it through the war alive and well. Each night I prayed to God to keep my family safe. I hoped and I hoped and I hoped.

And what did my hope get me?

The death of my siblings. The death of my brothers, who had been there for me my whole life.

I knew then that it was safer not to hope, because it did nothing. Hope would not cause death to spare your family. Eventually, your loved ones would die, and the hope would only make it more painful in the end.

So you would think that, after having had this lesson burned into me so strongly for so long, I would have been prepared for the second war. You would think that I would have learnt not to hope.

But when the second war came around, things were different.

Suddenly, I had so much to lose.

Not that I hadn't before, of course. Back then I had had my brothers and parents and husband and children, though Ginny was only there for the final portion, of course. But I hadn't really needed to be worried about the kids. They were all still young, none of them actually old enough to fight in the war. So I kept them close to me and tucked them away from the world and knew they'd be safe. My parents also hadn't caused much of a concern. They were too old to really be in the thick of things. They offered support from the sidelines, but in the end they probably weren't high up on You-Know-Who or any Death Eater's hit list. Arthur and I were in the Order, or course, but we had seven children, most of them still very young, and I was pregnant for a decent portion of the war, so we weren't really expected to do anything big. The Order mostly let us stay at home and do research to help those in the battles survive while we raised our children. But my brothers, they were in the heart of every move the Order made, every battle they undertook. They were the ones on the front lines, constantly in danger. So they were the only ones I really worried about. They were the only ones I really hoped for.

And they were also the only ones to die.

It wasn't hard for me to connect the dots.

Maybe those dots should have stayed connected this time around, but now it wasn't just my brothers I had to worry about. Now nearly all of my children were of age and there wasn't a bloody thing I could do to stop them from fighting and getting themselves killed. And the only child I still had who should have been under my legal control was doing her damnedest to get into every single one of those battles anyways. Now my husband didn't have young children to raise and a pregnant wife to protect, so he was right there with his sons (and sometimes his daughter) on the front lines. Now I had eight people in my family to worry about. Not to mention my two basically surrogate children, Harry and Hermione, off with Ron trying to do a quest even Dumbledore failed to complete. To make matters worse, it wasn't my _siblings_ this time, but my _children_. Not that I hadn't loved my brothers, because I did, more than my own life, but my children… it's an impossible love to describe. Until someone is a mother themselves, they cannot possibly understand what it feels like to love another creature the way a mother loves her child. There are no words.

And so conscious thought flew out the window and suddenly I found myself staying up all night, alone in the empty house, my family gone off to battle and on missions, and before I knew it my hands were clasped tightly together and pressed against my chest, and the words were falling off my lips like a mantra.

_Please let them all survive. Please let them all survive. Please let them all survive._

Without meaning to, I was suddenly hoping. Hoping like I never had before. It wasn't just a candle, the metaphor for hope I had heard so many times. It was a God damned bonfire, blazing in my chest where my heart should have been.

I wanted so badly to be with them. I was sure that if I was just there I'd be able to watch them and protect them. Kingsley always suggested I stay at Headquarters and help by relaying information and doing the research that was necessary to even get us to the battlefields. Once I put my foot down and told him that I was going to fight, that there was nothing he could do to keep me sitting there, perfectly safe, while my entire family risked their lives. That was when he sat me down and told me that if I were in the field I wouldn't be able to properly defend myself due to my lack of training and my family members would get hurt since they'd be distracted trying to protect me. He told me that the best way for me to keep them safe would be to research from Headquarters. I didn't believe him entirely, of course. In my heart I hoped that if I were there, I'd be able to keep them safe. I would throw my body in front of theirs and take the curse for them, if that's what it took. Kingsley didn't understand. He had no children, so he couldn't understand. But he had me with the line about my family getting hurt trying to protect _me_. I had no doubt they would do just that.

So I grudgingly sat there, safe and sound, buried in my paperwork, and hoped and prayed.

As the war went on, I almost began to convince myself that hope wasn't the curse I had once pegged it to be.

There were deaths, of course, and they were the deaths of people I loved. They were deaths that cut me to the core and left me sobbing into my pillow throughout the night.

Sirius. Albus. Alastor. Ted.

But in the end, they were not the deaths I had feared the most. It sounded awful, but I had not outright hoped for their survival. I had _wanted_ them to survive of course, but had I ever whispered the words out loud? No. I was too busy hoping for my own family.

Even within the family we had some close calls. Bill's mauled face. George's lost ear. But at the end of the day, I still managed to slide into bed content in the knowledge that all my family was still alive, despite (or perhaps, as I was reluctantly beginning to consider, _because of_) my hope.

Finally, we reached the final chapter of the war. The Battle of Hogwarts. You-Know-Who was there. Harry was there. And I knew in my heart that neither of them was planning on leaving that castle until the other was dead. One way or another, this fight would be the last one. By default, it would also have to be the deadliest. So there was no way I was going to let Kingsley leave me behind again.

My hands were shaking when I finally entered the castle that night, and I remember having the strangest thought as I stood in the Great Hall watching the army prepare itself for battle. I remember thinking, 'It's a good thing my hands weren't shaking this much during my N.E.W.T.s or I would've failed everything.' It did occur to me that that wasn't a great thought to have before going into a battle where aim would mean the difference between death of an enemy and death of an ally, but before I could really worry about it my eyes landed on Bill and George, discussing some defense or such. My gaze lingered on Bill's scars, George's ear, and my hands stopped shaking. I wasn't going to allow any more harm to come to my family.

We heard the banging of spells on the doors and I knew that it would be just moments before those doors blasted wide open and the first wave of Death Eaters would enter. I abandoned my superstition and sent a final, desperate hope to the sky, pleading for my family this one last time. And then the battle began.

When the Death Eaters finally retreated I breathed in deeply, and for a moment, one glorious moment, I truly believed that I was wrong, that hope didn't necessarily lead to death. Then I heard my husband screaming my name, panic and horror permeating his voice.

I assume I must have run to the sound of his voice, but I honestly don't remember it. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the Great Hall, my eyes locked on the dead body of my son.

Fred.

Just as there were no words to describe the love a mother feels for a child, there are no words to describe the pain a mother feels when her child dies. I cannot explain the pain I felt when I saw Fred, dead.

I wasn't consciously aware of it, but somehow it was still there, the pain, in every cell, every molecule of my body, burning deep within, throwing up denials, _no, no, no_, because this cannot be real, because if it is I won't survive, I must be dead, I want to be dead.

There's rage and agony and fear and all the while I deny, deny, deny, even as I throw wordless curses to the heavens for playing this cruel joke on me, for making me think that everything will be okay, for giving me everything I always hoped for, and then wrenching it away in one agonizing impossible moment.

I feel everything and I feel nothing and it's over and it won't end and nothing has ever been this terrible.

So I grasp my son's hand tightly and sob.

I don't remember much after that. I remember the announcement of Harry's death, wrenching another horrific hole through my heart that has already been torn to shreds. I remember a battle, and centaurs, and a snake's head in the air. And then there's that flash of green light, which only ever means death, and it's only inches from my daughter's face.

Every wordless emotion I have within me from all this horror burns up and consumes me and I'm screaming and I'm fighting, and all I can think is _damn it no more of my family is going to die_. Then I hear a scream and I look up into the red snake eyes of You-Know-Who and his wand is raised and I know I'm going to die.

But then I don't.

A shield spell is protecting me and I can't believe it but it's _Harry_ and he's alive and he's dueling You-Know-Who.

I want to block him, save him as I couldn't save Fred, but my feet seem to be rooted to the ground and all I can do is watch, tears streaming silently down my face.

And when the son of a bitch finally drops to the ground, it takes a moment before I understand.

You-Know-Who is dead.

Then there's screaming again, but somehow it's happy. I see my son and daughter throw themselves on Harry and they're crying again, as they've been all night, but now they're tears of joy.

The entire atmosphere has changed and in my shocked state, it takes me a moment to understand the emotion flooding through the room, washing over me in waves. But then I realize.

Hope.

I look back at my children, my family, all lost in a joyous mass of love surrounding Harry and I realize that they can feel hope for themselves, hope for a happy future.

And, shockingly, I realize I feel it too.

I lower my gaze and I see, through a pile of arms and legs, You-Know-Who's body, being given a wide-berth even in all the excitement.

It's white and cold and still. It's the epitome of all things death.

And I realize that maybe I was wrong. Maybe hope doesn't always lead to death. Maybe sometimes, it is death that can lead to hope.

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**AN: I hope you all liked it and that it didn't depress anyone too much! It was a sad one, but it had a bit of uplift at the end. Okay, so at the VERY end. Better than nothing ;). Molly is another new POV for me so I hope I did her justice! I would love to hear any and all thoughts you guys had so please leave me a review! And, as always, I am accepting word requests. I will be back next week, my dear readers (hopefully I'll actually manage to get the next one out on FRIDAY lol) so goodbye until then!**


	10. Discovery

**I know, I know, it's a day late AGAIN. It is starting to become a bit of a habit with me, isn't it? I'm super sorry. I want to make sure you all know that I AM doing my best to get these up on Friday and that me being a bit late doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing them. It just means that sometimes life can get in the way. BUT IT IS HERE NOW! YAY! I hope you all enjoy it :). Special thanks this week go to two people: LittleLionGirl once again for her word request and bloodyhell-ronald for requesting a Bill and Fleur drabble. Originally I was going to do this drabble from Fleur's POV but I found I didn't have enough of a handle on her childhood to know who she really was. So it's a Bill POV. I had to look up his bio on the HP wiki to write this one- if you haven't checked out that site before I really encourage it! I learned so much I never knew about the HP series. Anyways, enough babbling. Onto the drabble!**

****Word: Discovery** Set post-series. Bill thinks about what he had thought his life would be like vs what he actually got.**

* * *

It was an average Saturday morning in my life.

Completely ordinary. And yet at the same time, extraordinary.

I sat in my recliner in the den and gazed around the room slowly, drinking in the scene.

Never in a million years had I imagined I'd end up with this life.

Ever since I could remember, I had dreamed of a life of adventure. I wanted to pillage tombs and battle dangerous creatures. So from the moment I picked up a Gringotts brochure advertising their curse breakers at the ripe age of nine, I knew that that was what I wanted to do when I grew up.

I still remember that day clearly. Mum had taken me to Diagon Alley with her to pick up some potion ingredients for a brew to lower fever or stop infection or something else useful for her house of children. But first we stopped at Gringotts so that she could drop a few extra galleons into the vault to save. I was wandering as she argued with the goblin at the desk about whether or not it was worth a trip through the tunnels just to drop off three galleons. I tuned them out and found a round table pushed into a corner, a fine coat of dust showing that it wasn't a hot commodity with the customers. On it were stacks of papers, all related to the bank in some way. I flipped through pamphlets on goblin history, tips on saving, and posters for investment seminars. None of it interested me in the slightest. And then I found the brochure on curse breaking.

Looking back on it now, it wasn't all that nice of a brochure. It had a moving drawing on the front showing a cartoon wizard piling heaps of jewels from a treasure chest into a cloth sack with the words 'CURSE BREAKING: WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' flashing in neon colors above. All in all, probably not the best advertisement I'd ever seen. But for some reason, that brochure stuck with me. Maybe it was the idea of adventure and riches. Or maybe it was just that the bright colors and drawings appealed to my nine-year old curiosity. Either way, I took it with me and was so hooked that I missed with my mouth and pressed half my face into the ice cream Mum bought me afterwards because I was so busy reading the advertisement.

And with that, my future was set.

I knew that if I wanted to get into a job that had so few positions I couldn't be second best. So, even though school wasn't really my thing, I buckled down and worked my ass off. Sure, I was a fun, adventure-loving type of guy who always liked a good laugh, but I knew how to be serious when I needed to be. I made sure to make time for my friends and family and enjoy myself while I was at Hogwarts, but I studied too. I was somewhere between the twins and Percy. I got a time turner in third year to take extra courses. In my fifth year I became a prefect and got twelve O.W.L.s. In my seventh year I was made Head Boy. To balance this work out, I got my ear pierced and dangled a fang from it. I grew my hair long. I dressed to fit in at a muggle rock concert. I knew what I needed to do to obtain my goal, but I made sure to never lose my personality along the way.

It seemed like I had every aspect of my life planned out from before I even got to Hogwarts. But there was one thing that I never desired. Never even considered. And that was having a family of my own.

It wasn't that I was opposed to the idea exactly, but it just never crossed my mind. I was happy with my parents and siblings. I never felt like I needed more. And it was never one of those things that I had on my list of goals: fall in love, get married, have kids. For me, life was all about the adventure.

For a long time, it seemed like my life was going to be just that, all adventure and no settling down. And for a long time, I was totally happy with that. I couldn't have asked for more perfect years after Hogwarts when I nabbed that long desired job as a Gringotts curse breaker.

I discovered rubies and diamonds and sapphires. Swords and armor and crowns. Gold and silver and copper. And then there were the accidental discoveries. Mummies and zombies and assassins. Traps and caves and tombs. Poisons and hexes and curses. Accidental discoveries, yes, but still full of adventure and therefore a total blast. I was loving life.

But there was one discovery I still hadn't made. One that would knock me off my feet and send my life spiraling off down an unimaginable path.

That discovery came in the form of a gorgeous part-Veela.

I had just returned to Hogwarts with Mum to support Harry in the final Triwizard task. We were waiting in a room off the Great Hall with the other champions and their families when I first noticed her. Attuned as I was always was after years of curse breaking to people watching me, I could feel somebody's eyes following me. I glanced over my shoulder, a confident joke on my lips, but the words died as soon as I caught sight of her. She was beautiful, of course, but having both taken Care of Magical Creatures in school and travelled to Bulgaria on several expeditions, I could recognize that she was part-Veela. And trust me, once you've seen a Veela get angry they just don't have the same pull for you anymore. So it wasn't actually her beauty that stopped me in my tracks.

It was her confidence.

One look at her, and I just knew that she was just like me. Confident. Adventurous. And not particularly looking to settle down just yet. Of course, since she was a Triwizard champion I knew she must have been brave and willing to take risks for what she wanted, but there was something more to it. In that one moment, I just felt like I knew her, even though she was a total stranger.

I put the name I'd read in the papers to the face it must belong to.

Fleur Delacour.

She flipped her silver sheet of hair over her shoulder and turned her face half away, fluttering her eyelashes in my direction with a small seductive smile on her face. This was a girl who was clearly used to getting whatever guy she wanted.

I smirked. Did she really think that technique would work on me? Sure, I appreciated beautiful women as much as the next guy, but I had picked up too many booby trapped treasures in my time to make any judgment on just looks. Besides, I had no time to make any sort of move at that moment. Harry was on his way and if ever there was a kid who needed a family, it was him at that time. I was needed elsewhere.

And if she was really the type of girl I thought she was she would appreciate the challenge anyways.

So I turned my back on her.

It was months before I had any contact with her again, but I never doubted that the assumptions I had made about her personality were correct. I truly believed, and still do, that she was annoyed that I hadn't fallen at her feet and was trying to teach me a lesson while simultaneously convincing herself that she hadn't really wanted me anyways.

As a result, there was no anger or doubt in my mind when I saw her again at Gringotts. But I saw her glare towards me and decided to cut her a break (though I did chuckle under my breath at her reaction). I introduced myself to her and offered to help her with her English when I realized that was why she had taken the job.

One thing that I don't think any member of my family realized was that she originally declined my offer. Rather vehemently, to be honest. She swished her hair angrily and stormed away making some snarky comment towards me over her shoulder that for the life of me I can't remember because I was too busy checking out her ass. Hey, no one said curse breakers weren't allowed to check the treasure out from a safe distance, after all.

Her decline only made me more determined. It became a little mission for me, and it gave me the same adrenaline rush that I got from any tomb raid.

And that was definitely something no girl had ever made me feel before.

For a few weeks I sought her out every day at work. She never lessened her disinterest, which only made _me_ more interested.

Finally she gave in (although rather grudgingly, I might add) and it felt like finally breaking a curse you'd spent weeks trying to undo. There were still a few traps of course before I was going to be allowed to reach the treasure, but it still gave me a thrill of victory.

To my surprise more than anyone's, that thrill never lessened as we began to spend more time together and on more friendly terms. If anything, it only grew.

I already knew this girl was different. I already knew she held a large appeal for me. But I guess I just didn't really realize how large. Pretty soon my gimmicks and lines were gone and I was just being me. And it felt so damn right that I knew I'd never find another girl quite as perfect for me as this one.

So I followed the only next logical course of action I could think of. I proposed.

It didn't matter to me that she was several years younger than me, or that a couple members of my family couldn't stand her (I'm looking at you Mum and Ginny…), or that we had been together for such a short amount of time, or that we were in the middle of a goddamn war. I had always known who I was and what I wanted. And I'd always been the type of person who went for what I wanted full throttle. I knew that I would always love Fleur. So married I would be.

Despite my Mum and sister's ominous predictions, the relationship lasted. And it worked. She was by my side through Greyback's attack. We both stuck it out through our disaster of a wedding that ended in a battle. Eventually, my female relatives learned to love her. We got our own little house and shared our entire lives. She grieved with me through Fred's death. And I never left through her pregnancies with any of our three beautiful children, not even to go break a few curses or raid a few pyramids.

Besides the pregnancies and the first few months of each of the kids' lives, though, I kept my job. And that meant travelling. It meant long absences. It meant that Fleur would never be able to have a full time career of her own because someone needed to be able to look after the kids. But she never complained. To be totally honest, I don't think it ever even occurred to her _to_ complain. She'd always known who I was and what she was getting herself into. She knew that curse breaking was enormously important to me and that if she married me, she'd be marrying my job, too. She was okay with that. Which was something I could never thank her for enough.

So now here I was, a Gringotts curse breaker like I'd always imagined. My life's dream fulfilled. But not quite in the way I'd foreseen as a nine year old, or even as a seventeen year old. That was why there were still moments like this one, on those precious weeks when I was able to work frome home or had some time off, where I would sit in our den and stare around me and see my wife and daughters and son, laughing and playing and living, and be unable to believe that it was my life.

I thought of what my nine year old self would have thought of how I was living now and felt certain he wouldn't have been impressed.

I watched my wife carrying my son in her arms as she entered the kitchen, my daughters trailing after her babbling away. Fleur turned to me and flipped her slightly shorter sheet of hair over her shoulder, fluttering her eyelids at me just like so many years ago, but now her smile was playful and loving.

And I decided that I really couldn't care less what my nine year old self would have thought.

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**AN: I hope you all liked it! Please leave me a review and let me know what you thought :). And, once again, I am taking any and all requests. Talk to you all next week my lovely readers!**


	11. Happy

**Hehe. Woops. It's Saturday again isn't it? Sigh. Alright my dear readers, it seems like Saturdays are the days I like to write. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea haha. But you might want to start expecting these updates on Saturdays. If inspiration strikes and I am able to get them up on Friday I will certainly do so, so that you guys can read it a bit earlier, but don't count on it for sure. Apparently Saturday is just my day lol. Anyways, this drabble goes out doubly to LittleLionGirl for both requesting the word and a Luna POV. I've always wondered what it was that made Luna so Luna-ish, and this drabble explores that idea. I hope you all enjoy it! :D**

****Word: Happy** Set during the seventh book, while Luna is being held for ransom. Luna thinks about her mother, the way she has lived her life, and her future. **

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For as long as I could remember, I had lived my life following my mother's mantra.

Do what makes you happy.

She always used to say that when I was little. In her mind, it didn't matter what other people thought, or whether you were normal, or liked, or safe, or even following the law. To her, the only thing that mattered in life was doing whatever made you happy.

"My Little Luna Belle," she would whisper to me when she tucked me into bed at night, "you only have one chance at life. Don't waste a second of it. Be happy. Always."

"But what if what makes me happy is wrong?" I whispered back.

She laughed her trill of a laugh. "My beautiful moon, if you're truly doing what makes you happy, it can't be wrong. No matter what anybody else thinks. After all, what could be more right in this world than happiness?"

Then she would kiss my forehead and leave my room, with a walk so light and free it looked more like dancing.

My mother followed her own advice as well. The one thing she loved more than anything was expanding her magical range. Testing her boundaries. It was during one of those experiments that I watched her die.

You'd think that would have really turned me off the whole idea. But the thing is, I don't remember the accident as 'my mother's death'. I remember her excitement, her passion, and the smile on her face even as the light of life faded from her eyes. For my entire life my Mum had been happy. I couldn't remember a time when I had seen her cry or yell.

I couldn't quite claim the same accomplishment, myself. I certainly cried and raged after she died. But it was at her funeral, seeing the bright colors draped everywhere and hearing the upbeat music playing, that I made a vow to my mother to live my life the way she'd wanted me to: just as happily as she had.

For seven years I kept that vow.

It was easy for the first two. My father was just as eccentric as I was and he encouraged my own oddities. Together we went on adventures to new lands and discovered unheard of creatures. We gathered magical artifacts and uncovered conspiracies. I helped him with his magazine and together we told the world about our incredible discoveries. Secure as I was in my house with my Dad, it never occurred to me that there were people in the world who didn't live by my mother's philosophy, who didn't believe in everything that my family did, and who would go out of their way to make me miserable.

But I learnt the truth soon enough. When I first arrived at Hogwarts at eleven years old, the teasing started almost immediately. The other students made fun of my Butterbeer cork necklace and Dirigible plum earrings. They laughed when I told them about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and wrote rude comments on my copies of the Quibbler.

By the end of the year, the teasing had become a permanent part of how the other students interacted with me. I don't think many of them actually knew my real name; they just called me 'Loony'. My belongings had started to go missing at such a rapid rate that by the time I boarded the Hogwarts Express I had less than half the luggage I had gone to school with. I sat by myself at every meal, in every class. And by the end of what was supposed to be the best year of my life, I had a grand total of zero friends.

For my first three years of school, things mostly followed this pattern. Maybe that should have made my life miserable. Maybe I should have succumbed to the peer pressure and just become what they wanted me to be. Maybe I should have become an angsty teenager who hated the world. But I never forgot the promise I made to my Mum all those years ago, so I never gave in. No matter where I was, who I was with, or what the consequences would be, I was always myself and I always did whatever it was that made me happy.

And, to my surprise as much as anyone's, my Mum was right and it worked. Well, mostly at least. I was content. I knew who I was and I loved myself. I didn't want to change one thing about my personality. Sure, sometimes I wished I could change other people, but I couldn't so I didn't torment myself thinking about it. Instead I ignored my classmates and focused on everything I did that made me happy. As a result, I was happy. At least to a degree.

But it wasn't until fourth year that I realized that what I used to think was happiness, had nothing on true joy.

In my fourth year I actually became friends with Ginny, Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Neville. I joined Dumbledore's Army where I not only learned lots of new magic (something that always made me happy) but I also found my own small family at school. None of the other members of the club ever teased me. Sure, they may not have been inviting me to stay with them over Christmas or anything, but they were all kind and seemed to genuinely like me. No one ever laughed at my beliefs anymore. People defended me against those students who still insisted on teasing me. I went to a party as Harry Potter's date. When I would sit down in the Great Hall alone at a meal, it wouldn't be five minutes before someone joined me. They began conversations with me and actually made an effort to continue them. The oddest thing? They did all of this as though it was no big deal. As though it was normal. To them, I suppose it was. But to me, it felt as though my life was suddenly blazing with sunshine. I could never tell any of them how much their friendship meant to me.

And then the Department of Mysteries happened and I couldn't have been more thrilled. Two things still on my list of Things to do that Make Me Happy were ride a thestral and engage in violent battle for the good of wizardkind. And I accomplished both in one night. Sure, some people might say that night should have been traumatic, that I should have been afraid for my life, but the entire time all I could think about was my Mum, dying so happily, and I had no fear of death. If I died at that moment, I would have died the happiest I'd ever been. What more could someone ask for?

For the rest of my life, that night of battle with my five friends would be blazed in perfect detail in my memory.

I was finally living the life my mother had always wanted for me. That I had always wanted for me.

But then came the day when I realized that my Mum's philosophy wasn't true.

Sometimes, the things that make you happy _are_ wrong.

Unfortunately, I underwent this moral crisis during a kidnapping.

I was being held ransom by the Death Eaters because my Dad had been doing what made him happy: writing to support Harry Potter in his magazine. Now I was locked in a basement, being tortured every night, and told that I would only be set free when my father agreed to stop writing his 'lies'.

At first, I tried to hold on to my mother's way of life. After all, it was by following her advice that I had made it through the worst times of my life so far. It was by following her advice that I had become who I was.

I felt sure that it would work. If I could just focus on my own happiness, I would be able to ignore the pain and the misery. But I hadn't counted on Bellatrix, who had been trained in how to extract every ounce of pain a person can feel without dying, who was unable to feel empathy, and who could only feel joy when she was harming another living creature. I hadn't counted on the cold and the darkness, seeming to suck away the little happiness I could scrounge up. I hadn't counted on the boredom, locked in a dirty basement with absolutely nothing I could do that would make me happy. I hadn't counted on the emptiness, the feeling of being totally alone. But most of all, I hadn't counted on the endlessness.

The Death Eaters claimed that once my Dad stopped writing about supporting Harry Potter they would let me go. But I wasn't an idiot. I knew that, as happy as those articles had made my father, _I_ made him happier than anything else. If I was in pain, he would do anything to stop it. The moment they'd told him to stop writing he would have, and he would have meant it, for the rest of his life. He would have been willing to make an Unbreakable Vow. So I knew that the Death Eaters already had their official ransom. What they were waiting for now was the hidden request.

Harry Potter.

It was no secret that Harry and I had been friends at school. If they had me here anyways, they might as well keep me and try to get my Dad to hunt down Harry in order to secure my release. But I knew what the Death Eaters didn't know, or at the very least didn't care about.

_I_ was the one who was friends with Harry Potter, and I didn't even know how to find him. My father who had only met him once? He had no chance.

So I knew that I would never leave this basement. Never leave this hell. Not until either the war finally ended after who knows how long (assuming our side pulled off some miracle and actually won) or I died, and joined my mother in the afterlife.

After one particularly brutal session with Bellatrix, I lay curled on the dirt floor in the pitch black, rocking back and forth, and I battled with my pain, both emotional and physical, in an attempt to find even a glimmer of happiness inside of me.

I fell back to my old methods and began to think about my mother. Not any particular memory, just of her. Who she was.

I thought about her laugh and her kisses. I thought about her confidence and her smile. I thought about the radiant joy that emanated from her. I thought about her life's philosophy. I thought about her funeral. And I thought about my vow to her.

I wanted to keep my vow. So, through the pain, I tried to decide what it was that I wanted, what it was that would make me happy.

At first it seemed like there was no answer. But there was. Of course there was. And of course I knew it. It was obvious. I just didn't want to face it.

That realization hit me like a lightning strike and suddenly every decision I'd made in my life, every philosophy I'd based my identity on, every belief I held, crumbled into dust around me.

What was it that would make me happy? If my Dad found Harry, turned him in, and freed me from this hell, of course.

But that was wrong.

That was so, so wrong.

I should not wish that. If that happened, the entire wizarding world would fall. Every good human being left would die.

How could that possibly be what would make me happy? It just wasn't right. My Mum was wrong. She had always been wrong. Happiness wasn't always a good thing.

And so I made the decision that cut through my heart like a knife. Bellatrix's torture had nothing on this pain. Because for the first time since her death, I refused to make my Mum's dying wish for me come true. I would not do what would make me happy. I refused to hope for it.

Curled up in a filthy basement, bleeding and bruised, I broke the vow I made to my mother.

And the first tear I had shed since her funeral slid unseen and silent down my face.

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**AN: I hope you all liked it! Normally my drabbles end on an uplifiting note... this one is a bit sadder. If anyone is feeling sad, just remember that Luna gets freed and ends up married to a naturalist, discovers awesome creatures for a living, and has two kids. Wowza. I think we can all agree that she does end up living a happy life, but in her own way. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed the latest drabble! Please leave me a review to let me know what you thought. And as per usual, word requests are being accepted!**


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